At the dawn of the twenty-first century, we live in what has been called the “information society.” The ability to communicate instantly on a global scale has become a defining aspect of our life. Yet a couple hundred years ago, communication over a distance was limited to the speed that a human being could travel. Prior to the electrical telegraph, all but very small amount of information could be transmitted over limited distance at a very low speed. Samuel Morse (1791-1872) invented the first practical electrical telegraph instrument and formally demonstrated it by sending the first telegraph message “What Hath God Wrought?” from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, Maryland in 1844. Ever since then, the pursuit of better, more effective way of communication has driven all the technological advances in communication. The electric telegraph, besides being an effective way to transmit information swiftly, made its way into history as a fundamental instrument for economic growth, infrastructure expansion, and imperial expansion. Since its emergence, the electric telegraph was the first science-based invention that fulfilled the human’s quest for power over communication, and it diffused in society as a tool for some nations to assert dominance over their colonies and facilitate imperial influence.
1.1 The optical telegraph - a predecessor of electric telegraph system:
Technology and inventions are direct results of a continuous process in human beings’ quest to manipulate and control their environment. Telegraph technology, in particular, was invented as a response to a societal need for faster communication. Numerous telegraph systems had been invented prior to the electric telegraph as means to carry information over a distance. A direct predecessor of electrical telegraph, the semaphore telegraph is a system of conveying information by means of visual signals, using towers with pivoting shutter. This system was dominating the transmission of information in the 18th and early 19th century ("Semaphore line - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.") . The optical telegraph system was faster than post riders for bringing a message over long distances, yet had many limitations in itself, including speed, building cost, limited operation range, dependency on weather and privacy.
Figure 1. Claude Chappe’s optical telegraph tower. Source: Wikipedia.org
1.2. Increasing social need for telecommunication:
Despite the costly construction expenses associated with the optical telegraph, military necessity on communication dictated its adoption. Optical telegraph was used intensively to carry military information swiftly and reliably. Even though war goes a long way toward explaining the success of the optical telegraph in France, it is not sufficient. After all, there had been earlier wars and uprisings, but it was not until 1794 that the French government felt the need to build and maintain a telecommunication system as it expanded imperially. Headrick argued that “the telegraph appeared at the same time that revolutionaries were restructuring the national territory into equal departments, imposing a homogeneous system of weights and measures, and reorganizing time itself through a new calendar” (Headrick 198) . Aside from being a military necessity, the optical telegraph also had a profound political and ideological significance. As Claude Chappe wrote in 1793, “The establishment of the telegraph is the best response to the publicists who think that France is too large to form a Republic.” (Headrick 198) . The telegraph, therefore, was instrumental in the formation of French empire in 1790s. Besides politicians and military men, businessmen – bankers and financiers - also relied on telegraph to transmit critical financial news. As the stock market developed, the demand to obtain timely market information as soon as it emerged became critical for investors. In fact, in the 1820s, speculators obtained market information before the general public by using mounted messengers who could outrun the postal coaches. The optical telegraph emerged as the most effective way of transmitting information contemporarily, but “it was too complex, costly, and too closely tied to the government to be anything but an expression of power and culture” (Headrick 197) All the needs called out for a fast, affordable, and effective method of transmitting messages over a distance. The electric telegraph was the first to be able to fulfill all these requirements.
1.3. The scientific foundations for electric telegraph:
International interest in electric telegraphy had several causes. On the supply side, progress in physics made electric telegraphy possible. The electric telegraph appeared when it did because not until then had it been possible. It was fundamentally based on the knowledge of electricity developed by Ampere and Oersted and of electromagnetism by Sturgeon and Henry (Fahie). Howe stated that “The electric telegraph represented the first important invention based on the application of advanced scientific knowledge rather than on the know-how of skilled mechanics.” (Howe 697) Starting with the telegraph, innovation became a collective effort of experts working together using systematic investigations. Historian Donald Cole pointed out that “Morse was only one of over fifty inventors who built some sort of an electromagnetic telegraphic device before 1840” (Howe 697). The scientific foundations in electro-magnetism, collective enterprise efforts, and shared pools of expert knowledge together laid ground for Morse’s invention of the electric telegraph later.
2. Morse’s Telegraphs:
2.1. Morse’s early work and attempts:
In the 1830s, Schilling, Gauss and Weber, Steinheil, and Wheatstone, and Cooke all showed that electricity could be used to transmit messages. Samuel F. B. Morse independently developed an electrical telegraph in 1837, after a close encounter with the optical telegraph in a visiting trip to France. From France, Morse said “The mails in our country are too low, this French telegraph is better, and would do even better in our clear atmosphere than here, where half the time fogs obscure the skies… But this will not be fast enough. The lightning would server us better.” (Headrick 204). Morse built his first electric telegraph that was capable of transmitting over long distances using poor quality wire. In 1838, Morse first successfully tested the electric telegraph device in Morristown, New Jersey, and on 8 February, he publicly demonstrated it to a scientific committee at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, PA.
Samuel Morse’s contribution was not only the electric telegraph device but also a code that allowed the use of only one wire, with the earth serving as a return; the cost savings more than compensated for the need for trained operators. In 1843, Morse received funding of $30,000 from the U.S. Congress to build a telegraph line from Washington, D. C. to Baltimore.
Figure 2. Morse’s electric telegraph design. Source: Wikipedia.org
2.2 Successful demonstration of the Washington D.C. – Baltimore telegraph line:
In May 1844, politicians in Washington felt eager to learn news from party conventions taking place in Baltimore, 40 miles away. On May 1st, Morse and his assistant successfully demonstrated the telegraph system by transmitting the news of the Whig party’s presidential candidate nomination for Henry clay. News of the nomination was carried by the railroad to Annapolis Junction in Maryland, where it was then telegraphed to Morse in the Capitol. After completing the Washington D.C. – Baltimore line, Morse made the first public demonstration of his telegraph by sending the message “What Hath God Wrought” from Washington, D. C. to Baltimore on 05/24/1884 (Coe 184).
2.3. Transatlantic era:
After Morse’s successful demonstration of the telegraph system, it quickly became commercially adopted. “The first commercial telegraph line in the United States ran along the railroad right-of-way between Lancaster, PA and Harrisburg, PA.” The first transcontinental telegraph system was established on 08/24/1861, spanning North America. The first successful transatlantic telegraph cable was completed on 07/27/1866, allowing transatlantic telegraph communications for the first time.
Figure 3. Major telegraph lines in 1891. Source: Wikipedia.org
3. Electric Telegraph – Am Embodiment of Power, Order, and Expansion:
3.1. Infrastructure expansion based on electric telegraph:
The telegraph was a fundamental instrument of many nations’ expansion during the late 19th century, most notably the United States. Telegraph drove the expansion of railroads and city infrastructure, allowing effective communication and freight exchanges among the U.S. commercial centers. The telegraph’s greatest accomplishment was to expand information boundaries, enabling data to reach its destination with its whole usefulness. Infrastructure and railroad system expansion was fundamentally based on the success of electric telegraph. Within 29 years of its first installation at Euston Station, the telegraph network crossed the oceans to every continent but Antarctica, making instant global communication possible for the first time ("Electrical telegraph - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia").
3.2. Commercial use:
Decades of long-term economic expansion only temporarily reversed by downturns after 1819 and 1937 encouraged the business community to accord the electric telegraph an enthusiastic reception. Investment banker, in the pursuit for quick financial news, enthusiastically funded the expansion of telegraph lines in North America. Electric telegraph was used to transmit the prices of stocks and commodities. It helped integrate the financial market so that buyers and sellers find each other more easily. Electric telegraph soon connected all commercial centers: NY, Philly, Boston, Buffalo, Toronto. The North American newspaper made a quotation on January 15th, 1846 to welcome the telegraph with the pronouncement: “The markets will no longer be dependent upon snail paced mails.” Remarkably, the wires reached Chicago by 1848, enabling the Chicago Commodities Exchange to open that year (Howe 698). The electric telegraph played an increasingly important role in the expansion of financial markets across North America.
3.3. Political dominance and control over colonies:
Political parties in various countries where telegraph formed the backbone of communication perceived telegraph as a tool to acquire dominating power through control over information exchange. They were quick to realize the relationship between telegraph and monopoly capitalism. As James Carey stated, “the telegraph was a new and distinctively different force of production that demanded a new body of law, economic theory, political arrangements, management techniques, organizational structures, and scientific rationales with which to justify and make effective the development of a privately owned and controlled monopolistic corporation” (Carey 205). Therefore, control of the telegraph system essentially meant control over the communication backbone.
Besides political power, imperial countries recognized electric telegraph as an effective tool aiding to their dominance over colonies. Colonies’ governments used the telegraph a means of police control, fighting conspiracies, uprising, and reporting back to their dictating imperial government. Telegraphy is an element of power and order (Headrick 197). The British Empire strength during the decade from 1815 to 1914 was primarily depending on steamship and telegraph, allowing it to control and defend the Empire. “By 1902, the British Empire was linked together by a network of telegraph cables, the so-called All Red Line” (“British Empire- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia"). Electric telegraph, therefore, quickly became a tool of imperialism.
3.4. American imperial visions and electric telegraph:
The invention of electric telegraph also enabled the United States to enter its imperialist era. The swift growth in economy that followed directly from the expansion of infrastructure and communication network allowed the U.S. to become a major force in global politics. Howe stated that “[The electric telegraph] proved a major facilitator of American nationalism and continental ambition. Democratic publicists seized upon the significance of the telegraph for the imperial visions. John O’Sullivan’s Democratic Review rejoiced that the American empire now possessed ‘a vast skeleton framework of railroads, and an infinitely ramified nervous system of magnetic telegraphs’ to knit it into an organic whole” (Howe 697). The electric telegraph, besides being an effective way to transmit information swiftly, made its way into history as a fundamental instrument for economic growth, infrastructure expansion, and imperial expansion.
4. Bibliography:
4.1. Primary Sources:
De Bow, J. D. B., et al. "De Bow's Review." De Bow's review. (1853).
Fahie, J. J. A History of Electric Telegraphy, to the Year 1837. London; New York: E. & F.N. Spon, 1884.
4.2. Secondary Sources:
Carey, James T. Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society. New York : Routledge, 1988.
Coe, Lewis. The Telegraph: A History of Morse's Invention and its Predecessors in the United States. (1993): 184.
Headrick, Daniel R. When Information Came of Age: Technologies of Knowledge in the Age of Reason and Revolution, 1700-1850. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2000.
Howe, Daniel Walker. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2007.
A. Overview:
At the dawn of the twenty-first century, we live in what has been called the “information society.” The ability to communicate instantly on a global scale has become a defining aspect of our life. Yet a couple hundred years ago, communication over a distance was limited to the speed that a human being could travel. Prior to the electrical telegraph, all but very small amount of information could be transmitted over limited distance at a very low speed. Samuel Morse (1791-1872) invented the first practical electrical telegraph instrument and formally demonstrated it by sending the first telegraph message “What Hath God Wrought?” from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, Maryland in 1844. Ever since then, the pursuit of better, more effective way of communication has driven all the technological advances in communication. The electric telegraph, besides being an effective way to transmit information swiftly, made its way into history as a fundamental instrument for economic growth, infrastructure expansion, and imperial expansion. Since its emergence, the electric telegraph was the first science-based invention that fulfilled the human’s quest for power over communication, and it diffused in society as a tool for some nations to assert dominance over their colonies and facilitate imperial influence.Table of Contents
B. Contents:
1. Historical Context:
1.1 The optical telegraph - a predecessor of electric telegraph system:
Technology and inventions are direct results of a continuous process in human beings’ quest to manipulate and control their environment. Telegraph technology, in particular, was invented as a response to a societal need for faster communication. Numerous telegraph systems had been invented prior to the electric telegraph as means to carry information over a distance. A direct predecessor of electrical telegraph, the semaphore telegraph is a system of conveying information by means of visual signals, using towers with pivoting shutter. This system was dominating the transmission of information in the 18th and early 19th century ("Semaphore line - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.") . The optical telegraph system was faster than post riders for bringing a message over long distances, yet had many limitations in itself, including speed, building cost, limited operation range, dependency on weather and privacy.1.2. Increasing social need for telecommunication:
Despite the costly construction expenses associated with the optical telegraph, military necessity on communication dictated its adoption. Optical telegraph was used intensively to carry military information swiftly and reliably. Even though war goes a long way toward explaining the success of the optical telegraph in France, it is not sufficient. After all, there had been earlier wars and uprisings, but it was not until 1794 that the French government felt the need to build and maintain a telecommunication system as it expanded imperially. Headrick argued that “the telegraph appeared at the same time that revolutionaries were restructuring the national territory into equal departments, imposing a homogeneous system of weights and measures, and reorganizing time itself through a new calendar” (Headrick 198) . Aside from being a military necessity, the optical telegraph also had a profound political and ideological significance. As Claude Chappe wrote in 1793, “The establishment of the telegraph is the best response to the publicists who think that France is too large to form a Republic.” (Headrick 198) . The telegraph, therefore, was instrumental in the formation of French empire in 1790s. Besides politicians and military men, businessmen – bankers and financiers - also relied on telegraph to transmit critical financial news. As the stock market developed, the demand to obtain timely market information as soon as it emerged became critical for investors. In fact, in the 1820s, speculators obtained market information before the general public by using mounted messengers who could outrun the postal coaches. The optical telegraph emerged as the most effective way of transmitting information contemporarily, but “it was too complex, costly, and too closely tied to the government to be anything but an expression of power and culture” (Headrick 197) All the needs called out for a fast, affordable, and effective method of transmitting messages over a distance. The electric telegraph was the first to be able to fulfill all these requirements.1.3. The scientific foundations for electric telegraph:
International interest in electric telegraphy had several causes. On the supply side, progress in physics made electric telegraphy possible. The electric telegraph appeared when it did because not until then had it been possible. It was fundamentally based on the knowledge of electricity developed by Ampere and Oersted and of electromagnetism by Sturgeon and Henry (Fahie). Howe stated that “The electric telegraph represented the first important invention based on the application of advanced scientific knowledge rather than on the know-how of skilled mechanics.” (Howe 697) Starting with the telegraph, innovation became a collective effort of experts working together using systematic investigations. Historian Donald Cole pointed out that “Morse was only one of over fifty inventors who built some sort of an electromagnetic telegraphic device before 1840” (Howe 697). The scientific foundations in electro-magnetism, collective enterprise efforts, and shared pools of expert knowledge together laid ground for Morse’s invention of the electric telegraph later.2. Morse’s Telegraphs:
2.1. Morse’s early work and attempts:
In the 1830s, Schilling, Gauss and Weber, Steinheil, and Wheatstone, and Cooke all showed that electricity could be used to transmit messages. Samuel F. B. Morse independently developed an electrical telegraph in 1837, after a close encounter with the optical telegraph in a visiting trip to France. From France, Morse said “The mails in our country are too low, this French telegraph is better, and would do even better in our clear atmosphere than here, where half the time fogs obscure the skies… But this will not be fast enough. The lightning would server us better.” (Headrick 204). Morse built his first electric telegraph that was capable of transmitting over long distances using poor quality wire. In 1838, Morse first successfully tested the electric telegraph device in Morristown, New Jersey, and on 8 February, he publicly demonstrated it to a scientific committee at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, PA.Samuel Morse’s contribution was not only the electric telegraph device but also a code that allowed the use of only one wire, with the earth serving as a return; the cost savings more than compensated for the need for trained operators. In 1843, Morse received funding of $30,000 from the U.S. Congress to build a telegraph line from Washington, D. C. to Baltimore.
2.2 Successful demonstration of the Washington D.C. – Baltimore telegraph line:
In May 1844, politicians in Washington felt eager to learn news from party conventions taking place in Baltimore, 40 miles away. On May 1st, Morse and his assistant successfully demonstrated the telegraph system by transmitting the news of the Whig party’s presidential candidate nomination for Henry clay. News of the nomination was carried by the railroad to Annapolis Junction in Maryland, where it was then telegraphed to Morse in the Capitol. After completing the Washington D.C. – Baltimore line, Morse made the first public demonstration of his telegraph by sending the message “What Hath God Wrought” from Washington, D. C. to Baltimore on 05/24/1884 (Coe 184).2.3. Transatlantic era:
After Morse’s successful demonstration of the telegraph system, it quickly became commercially adopted. “The first commercial telegraph line in the United States ran along the railroad right-of-way between Lancaster, PA and Harrisburg, PA.” The first transcontinental telegraph system was established on 08/24/1861, spanning North America. The first successful transatlantic telegraph cable was completed on 07/27/1866, allowing transatlantic telegraph communications for the first time.3. Electric Telegraph – Am Embodiment of Power, Order, and Expansion:
3.1. Infrastructure expansion based on electric telegraph:
The telegraph was a fundamental instrument of many nations’ expansion during the late 19th century, most notably the United States. Telegraph drove the expansion of railroads and city infrastructure, allowing effective communication and freight exchanges among the U.S. commercial centers. The telegraph’s greatest accomplishment was to expand information boundaries, enabling data to reach its destination with its whole usefulness. Infrastructure and railroad system expansion was fundamentally based on the success of electric telegraph. Within 29 years of its first installation at Euston Station, the telegraph network crossed the oceans to every continent but Antarctica, making instant global communication possible for the first time ("Electrical telegraph - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia").3.2. Commercial use:
Decades of long-term economic expansion only temporarily reversed by downturns after 1819 and 1937 encouraged the business community to accord the electric telegraph an enthusiastic reception. Investment banker, in the pursuit for quick financial news, enthusiastically funded the expansion of telegraph lines in North America. Electric telegraph was used to transmit the prices of stocks and commodities. It helped integrate the financial market so that buyers and sellers find each other more easily. Electric telegraph soon connected all commercial centers: NY, Philly, Boston, Buffalo, Toronto. The North American newspaper made a quotation on January 15th, 1846 to welcome the telegraph with the pronouncement: “The markets will no longer be dependent upon snail paced mails.” Remarkably, the wires reached Chicago by 1848, enabling the Chicago Commodities Exchange to open that year (Howe 698). The electric telegraph played an increasingly important role in the expansion of financial markets across North America.3.3. Political dominance and control over colonies:
Political parties in various countries where telegraph formed the backbone of communication perceived telegraph as a tool to acquire dominating power through control over information exchange. They were quick to realize the relationship between telegraph and monopoly capitalism. As James Carey stated, “the telegraph was a new and distinctively different force of production that demanded a new body of law, economic theory, political arrangements, management techniques, organizational structures, and scientific rationales with which to justify and make effective the development of a privately owned and controlled monopolistic corporation” (Carey 205). Therefore, control of the telegraph system essentially meant control over the communication backbone.Besides political power, imperial countries recognized electric telegraph as an effective tool aiding to their dominance over colonies. Colonies’ governments used the telegraph a means of police control, fighting conspiracies, uprising, and reporting back to their dictating imperial government. Telegraphy is an element of power and order (Headrick 197). The British Empire strength during the decade from 1815 to 1914 was primarily depending on steamship and telegraph, allowing it to control and defend the Empire. “By 1902, the British Empire was linked together by a network of telegraph cables, the so-called All Red Line” (“British Empire- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia"). Electric telegraph, therefore, quickly became a tool of imperialism.
3.4. American imperial visions and electric telegraph:
The invention of electric telegraph also enabled the United States to enter its imperialist era. The swift growth in economy that followed directly from the expansion of infrastructure and communication network allowed the U.S. to become a major force in global politics. Howe stated that “[The electric telegraph] proved a major facilitator of American nationalism and continental ambition. Democratic publicists seized upon the significance of the telegraph for the imperial visions. John O’Sullivan’s Democratic Review rejoiced that the American empire now possessed ‘a vast skeleton framework of railroads, and an infinitely ramified nervous system of magnetic telegraphs’ to knit it into an organic whole” (Howe 697). The electric telegraph, besides being an effective way to transmit information swiftly, made its way into history as a fundamental instrument for economic growth, infrastructure expansion, and imperial expansion.4. Bibliography:
4.1. Primary Sources:
De Bow, J. D. B., et al. "De Bow's Review." De Bow's review. (1853).Fahie, J. J. A History of Electric Telegraphy, to the Year 1837. London; New York: E. & F.N. Spon, 1884.
4.2. Secondary Sources:
Carey, James T. Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society. New York : Routledge, 1988.Coe, Lewis. The Telegraph: A History of Morse's Invention and its Predecessors in the United States. (1993): 184.
Headrick, Daniel R. When Information Came of Age: Technologies of Knowledge in the Age of Reason and Revolution, 1700-1850. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2000.
Howe, Daniel Walker. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2007.
4.3. Reference Sources:
"British Empire." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 17 Mar 2009, 04:22 UTC. 17 Mar 2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=British_Empire&oldid=277799672>."Electrical telegraph - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." 2/19/2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_telegraph>.
"Semaphore line - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." 2/19/2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_telegraph>.